May 13, 2011

There was a popular webpage after the 2000 and 2004 elections showing purported average IQs in Blue States (e.g., Connecticut 113) and Red States (e.g., Utah 87). Of course, that was a hoax. But it received tens of millions of page views because it met a deep need among Democrats to feel smarter than Republicans.

Audacious Epigone has crunched the numbers from the latest release of the ongoing General Social Survey to find out whose supporters in 2008 did better on the GSS's 10 word vocabulary quiz (the scores from which correlate surprisingly well with genuine IQ tests.

Posting vocabulary scores on an IQ scale, McCain voters scored 102.5 versus 99.9 for Obama voters. On a real IQ test, the gap might have been even larger because the GSS vocab quiz shows only about a 10 point W-B gap. I suspect that McCain did better than Obama among people with higher performance than verbal IQs. (I'm trying to think of anything in Obama's biography, a hobby or whatever, that suggests a knack for something not involving words, and I'm drawing a blank: when a state senator, he was good at winning at poker against lobbyists, so I guess we'll count that. McCain loves casino gambling, which is a lot dumber than playing poker with people with expense accounts for making you feel good.)

On the other hand, the kind of people who misremember whom they voted for probably tend to score badly, and Obama's number might suffer from a post-facto bandwagon effect among dopes.

Of course, what white people care about is the difference among white voters. And there Obama won, but very narrowly: 103.2 to 102.9.

All this fits in with a lot of exit poll data from elections over the last decade showing that years of education among supporters tend to be very similar between the Republican and Democratic candidates, while Republicans do better on income (and the effective gap is even larger because Democrats tend to live in high cost of living states).

27 comments:

Obama plays poker! By all accounts he's a tight, moderately aggressive player. (Which is to say, he bets his good hands and rarely bluffs.)

It should be possible to do an analysis making use of responses to the science module questions of the GSS, if you want to look at non-verbal measures of intelligence. AE already did this vs. party identification, and there's more good stuff in the links on that post.

I listened to Michael Savage on the radio for the first time this week and the entire 10 minutes, all I could stomach, were attacks on universities for being liberal. Lots of stuff on how conservatives are persecuted on campus and have to hide their beliefs.

It was just bizarre, having been a conservative in college not too long ago and having lots of well-funded clubs with catered events, big speakers, etc.

I thought that, while Democrats get the low and high-end for level of education, Republicans get the middle. I assumed that Democrats would get more the 'smart' and 'dumb' people, while Republicans would again claim the middle.In other words, there would be less variance among Republicans, and a lot more among Democrats.

But the differences, among whites and all voters, don't look that meaningful to me. Do you have a CI for it?

"It was just bizarre, having been a conservative in college not too long ago and having lots of well-funded clubs with catered events, big speakers, etc."

You must be one of those McCainite modcons or have to one of the lesser conservative universities.

Try speaking honestly and courageously about racial differences, sexual differences, Jewish influence and power, the perversion of 'gay marriage', etc. Heck, you might be called into the dean's office for exchanging such ideas via email. (And hire a black stripper and treat her nice, but see what happens.)

If you have a high IQ how do you maximize career success? How about if you have a medium IQ? It's an interesting topic -- i know a lot of high IQ people who got caught up in particular kind of traps (e.g. grad school) which led to them under-performing.

The closeness of the white-Dem and white-Rep scores might also suggest that neither party offers something that can be clearly distinguished as relatively more beneficial on net by higher g voters. Similarly, I'd imagine that there is no correlation between IQ and the type of salad dressing one tends to prefer.

"There was a popular webpage after the 2000 and 2004 elections showing purported average IQs in Blue States (e.g., Connecticut 113) and Red States (e.g., Utah 87). Of course, that was a hoax."

I don't know about Utah, but given that many red states in the South and Southwest have lots of blacks and Mexicans, I can believe that the average IQ of red states is lower than that of blue states but ironically because of non-white Democratic voters.

"Try speaking honestly and courageously about racial differences, sexual differences, Jewish influence and power, the perversion of 'gay marriage', etc.Heck, you might be called into the dean's office for exchanging such ideas via email. "

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You're right about the race/gender stuff, but way off about Jewish influence being taboo. I graduated from a prestigious/extremely liberal university, and the general milieu was extremely anti-Israel/Jewish lobby.

We invited Normal Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky to speak, for instance, with only token opposition from the JSA. Also outside our Student Union, all kinds of anti-Zionist groups/pro Palestinian types were constantly recruiting and handing out information (including the LaRouche people), and no one ever seemed to care.

My point is, being anti-"ZOG" is very fashionable on lefty college campuses.

Yes, inviting two influential ultra-leftist Jews to speak clearly proves one to be able to speak freely about Jewish influence.

Now, suppose you get a WASP to come speak about his anti-Israel, and pro-sending Finkelstein and Chomsky to Israel stance? Think that might fly?

Yeah, so in other words if you aren't critiquing Jewish influence and power in such a way as to paint it as championing the cause of oppressed brown people it is unacceptable. You still can't oppose Jewish influence for the sake of white, founding stock Americans and not give a fuck about Palestinians.

You can't discuss Jewish influence in matters other than the I/P conflict at all.

Democrats are more verbal, while Republican are more quantitative. I'd bet that a total IQ test, instead of verbal wordsum score, would show white Republicans with higher IQs than white Democrat. Republicans have higher incomes and income correlate with IQ.

Yes, inviting two influential ultra-leftist Jews to speak clearly proves one to be able to speak freely about Jewish influence.

I think Mearsheimer and Walt have been making the rounds at college campuses, too. They go well beyond discussing the Israel/Palestine conflict.

Nobody really talks about the Jewish promotion of immigration and ethnic diversity, unfortunately, but that's probably because neither liberals (who are pro-diversity) nor conservatives (who are pro-Jewish/Israel) have an interest in bringing that up.

I can not honestly think of one thing that would be better in America had John McCain won in 2008. I can imagine a number of things that might have been worse. McCain was perhaps the worst Republican nominee who ever ran - and that's saying a lot.

"I can not honestly think of one thing that would be better in America had John McCain won in 2008. I can imagine a number of things that might have been worse."

Republicans won control of the House, and gained 6 Senate seats, in large part thanks to Obama's lousy governance.

Had McCain won there still would've been Democratic control of Congress, therefore no conservatives on the Supreme Court, and the economy would still stink, and the deficit would still be sky high, and the Democrats would now have supermajorities in both houses of Congress - a fact which McCain would secretly be relishing. Oh, and we'd have an amnesty.

That is why I voted for Baldwin. I'm not bragging about my predictive powers. I think anyone who was paying attention, and who lived through 1994, knew what was coming. My next prediction is that the GOP will lose Congress by 2016 - if a Republican wins the White House in 2012, unless the Tea Party element remains strong. They're still in the pockets of the neocon/neofeudalist elite. I really don't see that changing.

In general the left and the right are about equally smart. How could it be otherwise? Our colleges graduate thousands of psychology students each year who are desperate for a thesis topic. If for example liberals were truly smarter than conservatives how long would it take for the news to leak out?

But these left-right groupings have sub-components. For example ditch diggers are more likely to be Democrats while the edge fund managers are probably Republicans. But these differences all seem to balance out across the full spectrum of opposing subgroups.

So on most policy questions there is seldom a clear IQ difference in play. An exception seems to be Global Warming. People who believe in anthropogenic global warming tend to be innumerate. That is to say they tend to be the kind of person who didn't do well on the quantitative section of the SAT.

Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) requires you to be alarmed over the results of calculations and computer models. The proper state of alarm is much easier if the subjects are ignorant of math models and are unlikely to challenge computer algorithms. Warming Skeptics are more likely to have good SAT or GRE math scores.

Otherwise IQ seems to be orthogonal to the political spectrum - just as Private Willis' song says.

My point is, being anti-"ZOG" is very fashionable on lefty college campuses."

That is patently ridiculous. No left-winger ever uses the term "ZOG". That term is only used by certain members of the right (anti-semitic white nationalists, neo-nazis, christian identity types, etc.).

Really? Are you in the WH basement?There is, indeed, a sickening fetish for him among certain middle-aged white liberal-type females of my acquaintance, esp. Jewish, which I guess is still on, given the media ownership; but he does make a lot of people queasy, and they come to be repelled by him sooner or later. Unlike me (I conclude I can't vote for any of them anymore), they overcome it if some sort of political agenda is served. There's a lot nose-holding while casting the ballot, that goes in D.C. The current Creatures from the Black Lagoon, no pun intended--Chicago politics, fit in pretty well.

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